Orange County Great Park Visitors Center
Irvine, Calif.

Construction is set to begin on the 5,000-sf Visitors Center pavilion at the Orange County Great Park—a new urban park built on the decommissioned Marine Corps Air Station El Toro (featured in the movie “Independence Day”) spanning more than 1,300 acres. Thornton Tomasetti provided structural design to architect WRNS Studio. The steel and CMU structure features a gallery under a high roof covered with metal deck on steel beams. The lateral load resisting system is a mix of moment and concentrically braced frames above CMU and metal-stud shear walls. Although not typically used in a small building in a high seismic area, a mixed system was adopted due to the challenging architectural design. The façade features aluminum metal panels, a CMU-supported gabion wall and a glass curtain wall with horizontal fins. The gabion wall (a welded wire fabric cage with crushed concrete from the El Toro runway) also works as a seismic lateral force. A photovoltaic laminate will cover the high roof.